“But surely he must have seen it was a crime to house his factory hands like that.”
“He didn’t seem to. You see he compared well with many employers. He doesn’t know—how could he, that his generation let us in. We paid their bill. All the wickedness and the suffering of the great black winter had their root in the blindness and self-seeking of his generation and the one before him.”
“He’s never been the same to me since he found I killed the rookery. What’s a rookery to a thousand children reared in a smoky swamp. What will he think of me when he hears that I stalked and shot the last fox in the county?”
“He must not hear it. We must guard him,” said Serena, “and I pray that his life may not be long. It can’t be, I think, and we have been warned that any sudden shock will kill him. I wish he could have a joyful shock and die of it, but there aren’t any joyful shocks left for him in this world I am afraid.”
“Have you explained to him that his grandchildren are coming home to-morrow from the Rocky Mountains?”
“I have told him that they are coming, but not that they have been in the Rockies. He might think it rather far to go for a fortnight’s fishing.”
“Serena, what on earth will Father make of Jack. Jack is so dreadfully well-informed. I hardly dare open my mouth in his presence. Jack says he is looking forward to meeting his grandfather, and realising what he calls his feudal point of view.”
“Jack only means by that expounding to his grandfather his own point of view. I don’t think your Father will take to him, but he will love Catherine; she is so like your Mother, and she never wants to realise any point of view.”